


Good Day At The Museum

by Loolin



Category: Tally Hall (Band), Tally Hall Internet Show
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Gen, automated players au, listen it's only rated teen because the f word is used once ok, way too many references to various tally hall works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:35:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26353546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loolin/pseuds/Loolin
Summary: Mishaps At Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museuma sotry based on quicksilverace's automated players au feat. way too much worldbuilding for an au that doesn't belong to me
Kudos: 9





	Good Day At The Museum

**Author's Note:**

> by god why did this have to be the first work of writing i ever publish

Periodically, the boys would be hired (or rented out, depending on your views of the sentient nature of singing automatons) to come to some party or other venue for a day and sing a set of songs for whoever the audience happened to be. This was not one of those days. While they were indeed spending a day away from the LaBORAtory earning some dollar bills y’all with their skills y’all, their arrangements were rather more specialized for this occasion. They would be performing on a stage, with lighting and moving platforms and a coin slot for the people walking by to insert some cash in order to get a song, for today was going to be a day spent at none other than Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum. They would spend the entire day standing on a stage, and whenever someone decided they wanted a song, they could slip a coin into the slot and select a song from the list, and the marionette quintette would come alive before their eyes and sing a song for them all. For convenience and comfort, they wouldn’t be awake all day, or else it’d be not only boring standing still in one position for long stretches of time, it’d also be a tad bit more unsettling for the patrons of the museum to be at any point in time under the surveillance of singing animatronics that looked too inhuman when standing still for comfort.

So for the average museum-goer the attraction, put far enough out of the way as to not look intimidating but central enough for the music to be heard across the whole floor, was at first glance no more eye-catching than any other attraction, if not for its size. Of course, reading the plaque, which heralded the band as “Marvin’s Marvelous Automated Players”, and taking a look through the smoked glass to see the silhouettes of 5 very human shapes is usually enough to get a patron glancing through the setlist to find a song they like, and before you know it the glass has come down and there’s a marionette quintette awake and singing whatever songs you like to hear. From the perspective of the band, the day would go by in a clearly structured manner; they would wake up when a song is selected, it would be announced from the speakers as the glass would go down and their equipment powered on, they would play the song, then go back to sleep until the next time. From a human perspective, it might seem somewhat strange to experience an entire day cut up like that, with a complete and utter void “filling” up the spaces in between performing for a crowd, but to the androids themselves it was just as natural as a lack of taste buds or need for sleep. A good day at the museum would go by exactly as planned, which made the band happy to know that so few days passed by so uneventfully.

To start, they had a rather small audience. They knew their playing was usually loud enough to be heard across the whole floor, and speakers were apparently going to be installed in all the places they couldn’t yet be heard, but usually the number of people who stuck around their stage to hear them truly in person was more than two. And yet here they were, performing for what would surely be the smallest crowd of the day; a parent, clearly disinterested in the concert, and their small daughter, who, if her enthusiasm was anything to go off of, was single-handedly responsible for taking her parent to the museum to see the band in the first place. That was another notable thing about this audience, the sheer youthfulness of its one enthusiastic member. Being robots, the band hadn’t actually experienced adolescence first-hand, but they had picked up enough about the process to understand this 6 or 7 year old girl was of an exceptionally young age to be enthusiastically clapping along to a song like Greener.

This song in particular was one the boys expected to grant them a few seconds at the end before they fell asleep again, and so they initially thought nothing of their continued consciousness as Rob sang the final note. It was only after the girl’s parent started pulling on her hand to bring her away from the mechanic attraction she so adored they realized that they were definitely not going back into sleep mode. In theory, this- getting to remain cognizant for longer -wouldn’t be a bad experience, but until they fell back asleep the glass of their stage would remain lowered, so they would be not only rather bored, but open to vandalism and theft. They were especially concerned about the latter, since the time the band had awakened for a Spring and a Storm only to find their drummer missing and Ross woke up to find himself lost in the middle of the woods (why he specifically had been pilfered was the subject of much debate. Rob was offended he wasn’t stolen for his gold plating, Andrew was glad his steam-powered nature made him too cumbersome to make off with, Joe and Zubin always said Ross was only taken thanks to his conveniently small stature, while Ross himself just wanted to know why he ended up in the woods of all places. They were driving Casey insane). Thankfully, after that eventful afternoon, they had developed a backup plan- “developed”, in the sense that they knew they had to do something about their situation and had some idea of what needed to be done, but hadn’t decided what to do about anything else that would have to do with the situation.

Proactive to a fault, Joe, the band’s nearest electronics expert, stepped off to the side to see what might have caused the malfunction, while Ross stood at the ready to call the LaBORAtory for advice or an emergency repair. Rob, unsure of what else there was to do, stepped forward and crouched down to better speak with their captive audience of 1.

“Uh, Hi there. What’s your name?” He asked. None of them were particularly experienced with having conversations with fans, least of all such young ones, so starting off simple seemed like a good plan to Rob.

She looked up at him, starstruck. Her parent looked between the two of them, expressing interest in the goings-on of their daughter and the band she loved so much for the first time said band had managed to notice. They gave a small nod of approval which hardly seemed to be necessary (or noticed) by their daughter as she tentatively replied, “Sally”.

“Sally. That’s a good name, right?” He looked to his bandmates for affirmation, and Andrew and Zubin, the least preoccupied of the bunch, nodded. “Right. Sally, how would you like to ask us all a question? We’ll do a mini-Q&A, right now.”

Her face lit up and she nodded emphatically. Rob was struck with the thought that she might be severely disappointed if Joe managed to fix the bug sooner rather than later, then reconciled it with that she was probably happy enough to get one question that not having more would do no harm. After a couple seconds of gathering her thoughts, she stepped up to the stage and stood on tiptoes to ask, “What’s your favorite animals?”

While none of them could admit they were prepared for anything about the situation they found themselves in, that question in particular was simple enough that they could be thankful for the simple pleasures in life. Zubin gave a small smile and answered with ease, “Horses. I just think they’re neat.”

Joe sat up for a moment. “I would say my favorite is the gorilla,” he responded, before busying himself with the wiring once more.

“Hm. Andrew?” Rob said, turning towards him and fully away from Sally below.

“I think my favorite animal is a penguin.” He paused, looking at the others who were staring at him with odd expressions on their faces. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, I guess I expected you to be into something more…” Ross trailed off.

“Something like a giraffe, or an elephant” Rob finished, getting a nod from Ross & Zubin and a frown from Andrew.

“Why would I like elephants? They’re kinda gross.” Andrew replied.

“Elephants are clean animals, they don’t like to eat things that have been covered in slop, unlike pigs. Nothing wrong with pigs though.” Joe muttered, his voice muffled from his position deep within the electronics of their stage.

“Well, I like other kinds of birds too. Like hummingbirds! They’re pretty cute.” Andrew continued, pointedly ignoring whatever the fuck Joe just said.

Zubin got a coy look on his face. “Speaking of birds, I think I can guess what Ross’s favorite animal is-”   
“It’s sharks. Sharks are my favorite animal” Ross cut Zubin off, shooting a small glare his way, giving Rob the impression there was some hidden tension between the two of them. “Anyway, what about you, Rob?”

“Oh, uh,” he had been so busy listening to the others that he forgot to think of an animal of his own. He frantically went over all the animals he knew in his head before choosing the first one that stood out to him. “Flamingos.”

At this point Joe sat up and gave a quick thumbs up to the others, his hand resting next to a small button within the panel, poised and ready to strike. With a nod of affirmation from Andrew, Rob turned back to Sally, relieved. “Does that answer your question?”

She gave them two big thumbs up, grinning and bouncing on her feet with joy. Her parent, who seemed more engaged by this whole exchange than they had been for the entire concert, cracked a small smile as they took her hand and started to walk away. Even this would not prevent her from waving to them, right up until they made their way out of sight. With her gone, the band more comfortably came together to get a better grasp on the situation from the one of them who had been so closely engaged with it. Joe, who was not expecting this sort of intensive attention from the entire band, just shrugged and pointed harder at the button his hand had been hovering over. “As soon as i press that button the glass’ll come up and we can go back to sleep. That’s it.”

The others, recognizing they weren’t going to get any better of an explanation than that, got moving back to their original positions, as they normally would whenever a performance finished. Only Ross, who hadn’t actually moved from his drum set throughout the whole exchange, stayed where he was, and apparently this respiteful time allowed him to do some thinking, as he asked, “Hey, are we going to tell Bora and Casey about this?”

Joe pressed the button.

**Author's Note:**

> Index of all the references i can remember making:  
> "dollar bills y'all" - "What's Happenin' Now?" a educational rap video feat. Joe and Rob by Quack! Media  
> "elephants are clean animals..." - Boralogue V  
> the name Sally - the THIS in general  
> "day cut up like that" - a very distant reference to 15 Seconds Of Bora or THIS episode 7  
> all of their favorite animals - the THIS, Rob's song Flamingo, and Andrew's song Hummingbird; all but the flamingo & hummingbird are referring to the animal suits they wore on the show, with those two referring to the songs of the same names  
> various phrases in the whole work are taken straight from Welcome To Tally Hall (mechanic attraction, songs you like to hear, etc.)  
> "Ross... lost in the middle of the woods" - THIS episode 2, Death Request (the Rost bit at the very end)  
> "Joe, the band’s nearest electronics expert" - The Mind Electric and Joe's dream journal segment  
> and of course, the concept for the androids and the “Marvin’s Marvelous Automated Players” booth itself belong to quicksilverace


End file.
